VANCOUVER — Six years after a Weyerhaeuser sawmill worker was killed in an accident described by investigators as involving “reckless disregard” for safety by the company, the United Steelworkers Union has launched its own private criminal prosecution against Weyerhaeuser.

Steelworkers regional director Steve Hunt and prominent criminal lawyer Glen Orris launched the charge against Weyerhaeuser at New Westminster Provincial Court on Thursday, saying the death of sawmill worker Lyle Hewer was not only preventable but was a criminal act by his employer, Weyerhaeuser.

The union is laying charges under the so-called “Westray amendment” to the Criminal Code. The amendment makes it legal to charge companies with criminal neglect. It was passed in March 2004, in response to the 1992 deaths of 26 coal mine workers at Nova Scotia’s infamous Westray mine.

Weyerhaeuser has been charged with being criminally negligent in the death of Hewer.

It is the first time in Canada a private prosecution has been brought against a company under the Westray amendment. Hewer, 55, was killed Nov. 17, 2004, at Weyerhaeuser’s New Westminster sawmill when he tried to clear the clogged hopper of a machine called a hog. The hog grinds wood waste into wood chips. Debris that was wedged in the four-metre-high hopper came loose while Hewer was working on it. He was engulfed and smothered by the falling wood chunks.

At the time New Westminster city police recommended criminal charges be laid against Weyerhaeuser under the Westray amendment to the Criminal Code. However, the B.C. criminal justice branch said at the time that the evidence did not support a substantial likelihood of conviction.

An investigation by WorkSafeBC found that there was a high level of knowledge about the hazard by Weyerhaeuser management but they did nothing. The violations were committed wilfully or with reckless disregard, WorkSafeBC vice-president Roberta Ellis said in 2007 after the safety agency completed its own two-year investigation into the accident.

Weyerhaeuser was fined the highest amount ever by WorkSafeBC, $297,000. In a blistering report, WorkSafeBC said senior Weyerhaeuser management had resisted work orders from line managers to make the hog safe, saying it would cost too much money. The work was done after Hewer was killed. It cost $30,000.

Management condoned a culture “where complacency in the face of danger became the norm,” the report stated.

Workers had expressed concerns before about the safety of the hopper. Less than an hour before Hewer died, another worker had expressed concerns about the safety of the hog to a supervisor. The supervisor then approached Hewer, who was described as a cheerful and hard-working person, to do the job.

The Steelworkers’ action is only the fourth time in Canada a company has been charged under the amendment. The first one was withdrawn as part of a plea bargain; in the second, the company involved pleaded guilty. The third has just been initiated in Ontario.

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B.C. union lays rare charge against forest company over worker’s death